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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25041358">a waking dream</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/myaimistrue/pseuds/myaimistrue'>myaimistrue</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>I knew this day would come to finally save me/teach me to love, and how to stay (Nora and MacCready) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Late Night Conversations, Mutual Pining</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:36:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>841</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25041358</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/myaimistrue/pseuds/myaimistrue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nora and MacCready talk under the stars.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Robert Joseph MacCready/Female Sole Survivor, Robert Joseph MacCready/Sole Survivor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>I knew this day would come to finally save me/teach me to love, and how to stay (Nora and MacCready) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843762</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a waking dream</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>just a little dialogue-heavy one-shot about a sweet moment between these two. hope y'all like it!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nora exhaled slowly and watched her breath curl away into the darkened sky. The stars were shining more brightly than they ever did before the bombs, shimmering pricks of light scattered in clusters across the sky. She could see every little detail.</p><p>MacCready tended the fire. His hat was off for once, placed carefully on top of his pack beside his rifle. He was a far more meticulous person than she would have expected; in her experience, the Wasteland didn’t nurture traits like neatness and precision in its people, but MacCready seemed to be an exception. In the months they’d spent together, she’d learned his rituals: he carefully shaved his face every morning, checked to ensure his pack was in perfect order whenever they took a break, cleaned every bit of his gun before going to sleep. She’d never met anything as methodical as him. Even now, as he poked at the fire, there was a consistent rhythm to his moments; she could almost count it out</p><p>“Are you cold?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Are you cold?” He repeated, glancing at her arms wrapped around her torso.</p><p>“Oh, no. I’m okay.” Nora looked up and pointed at a particular cluster of stars. “Do you see that?”</p><p>He squinted. “What?”</p><p>“It’s a constellation. Do you know what those are these days?” She said. It used to feel so jarring to her, how little of the world’s knowledge had survived to 2787, how she could make a reference or comment to something from her time, and no one would understand. Now, though, it just felt like a cultural difference in a foreign country, like something lost in translation; she’d almost grown fond of it.</p><p>“Yeah, we do, but I don’t know much about them.” He looked on, interested. “Which one is that?”</p><p>“Orion. It’s a man, see? The stars across the center are his belt, and I don’t know if you can really tell, but he’s shooting an arrow.”</p><p>“I see it.” His face broke into a small smile that Nora had rarely seen before; it made him look younger. “Do you know any more?”</p><p>She frowned, eyes following the clouds blowing into the sky. “I know a few, but the clouds are getting in the way. We’ll have to try again some other night.”</p><p>He nodded and returned to poking at their dwindling fire. “You know,” He said, not meeting her eyes, “Lucy liked to stargaze.”</p><p>“She did?”</p><p>“Yeah. She had an old book her dad gave her with all this science sh- crap in it about the universe.” A wistful smile came across his face. “She knew the names of all the planets. She’d point them out to me, sometimes.”</p><p>Nora looked at him, and his eyes were focused resolutely on the fire.</p><p>“Nate and I, we used to go to the planetarium. It was this sort of movie theater- you’d sit and look up at the screen, and they’d show animations of the planets and the stars,” She explained. “It was great for dates. The lights would go down, and you’d be so close to each other with the music playing and all the lights… it felt like being in your own world.”</p><p>“That sounds beautiful.” MacCready said it so quietly she almost didn’t hear it.</p><p>"It was.” She smiled sadly. “There was a lot of beauty, then.”</p><p>He snorted. “Not anymore.”</p><p>“I don’t know. Some things are beautiful.”</p><p>“Like what?” MacCready raised an eyebrow.</p><p>“The hope,” Nora said. He was watching her with an indecipherable expression. “Things are changing in the Commonwealth, you know? People are trying to make this place better. They help one another and rebuild when things go wrong and fight like hell for each other.”</p><p>He smiled at her. “People like you.”</p><p>His eyes were warm in the firelight, and not for the first time, she found herself wondering about him. About what might be between them, and if he felt it too. She held his gaze for a moment that seemed to stretch on forever.</p><p>“And people like you,” Nora said softly.</p><p>MacCready looked down, and just like that, the moment was gone. “Yeah, I don’t know about that.”</p><p>“I-”</p><p>“I’m supposed to be on watch. You should rest so you aren’t tired for your shift,” MacCready said. He seemed detached, suddenly, like they were strangers.</p><p>“Yeah.” Nora looked at him, but he seemed to have decided to pretend she wasn’t here. She didn’t know how to feel; something had clearly just happened between them, but she couldn’t name it. She didn’t know if she wanted to. “Yeah, I probably should.”</p><p>She stood up to duck into the falling down shed they’d set up their sleeping bags in and looked up at the sky. The stars were completely obscured by clouds.</p><p>“Nora?”</p><p>“Yeah?” A flutter in her chest, like she was a teenage girl.</p><p>“I… Listen, I know that I… That you’re…” MacCready sighed and looked away again. She could have sworn his cheeks were tinged pink. “Just, sleep well."</p><p>She smiled a little. “You too, Mac.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>title from <a>this</a> quote by aristotle.</p><p>let me know what you think :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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